Union leader demands de Blasio reinstate suspended peace officers in baby-grab incident

A union president Monday demanded that Mayor de Blasio reinstate and apologize to two city peace officers suspended over a confrontation at a welfare office that ended with NYPD cops pulling a baby from his mother’s arms.

Greg Floyd, president of Teamsters Local 237, blasted the mayor’s criticism of the two Human Resources Administration peace officers who were involved in a Dec. 7 tussle with Jazmine Headley at a welfare office in Brooklyn that wound up in a viral video.

That morning Headley went to HRA’s Boerum Hill office to find out why her day care payments had been terminated. Headley was accosted by hostile security and ultimately wound up under arrest. She claimed she had to wait nearly four hours and was forced to sit on the floor because there were no available seats.

Witness statements by HRA supervisors, however, state that Headley spewed epithets when private security and then HRA peace officers told her to get off the floor. They say there were seats available, that she took her child out of his stroller and used him as a shield when cops arrived, and that she bit one of the HRA peace officers in the ensuing fracas.

NYPD has said nothing about the actions of the two cops, instead blaming the peace officers for escalating the conflict. Late last week the city suspended HRA Administrative Sgt. Toyin Ramos-Williams and Peace Officer Bettina Barnett-Weekes for 30 days and is moving to have them fired. Local 237 is fighting the suspensions.

“Suspending Sgt. Ramos-Williams and Officer Barnett-Weekes is an arbitrary and capricious abuse of power,” Floyd wrote in a letter sent to de Blasio Monday. “The officers were simply doing their jobs in resolving a difficult situation and there is no justification whatsoever for disciplining them.”

De Blasio did not answer questions about the incident until last Wednesday, at which point he placed the blame squarely on the HRA officers for what he termed a “100% unacceptable” incident. The mayor said nothing about the two NYPD cops involved in the fracas, including one who waved a Taser at a gathering crowd and the other who aggressively wrested the 1-year-old boy away from Headley.

Neither of the cops have been suspended.

In his letter, Floyd dubbed the suspensions “no more than a transparent overreaction to negative media coverage that arose because you took five days to issue a public statement regarding the incident.”

He demanded that the mayor “rescind the suspensions immediately and that you apologize to (the two) for treating them like sacrificial lambs in your media strategy.”

At a city Council hearing Monday Department of Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks repeated his condemnation of the incident and again apologized to Headley. On Friday Banks announced that going forward, HRA peace officers will have to consult with an HRA supervisor before calling in the NYPD except in cases of imminent danger.

General Welfare Committee Chairman Steven Levin made clear there are many unanswered questions about what happened, including why Headley had to wait for nearly four hours as she tried to resolve a dispute over day care payments and why her benefits were cut off in the first place.